


Eastbourne Under a Bad Sign

by oxymoronic



Series: The Eastbourne Supremacy [2]
Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Angst, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, Fluff, Humor, Internalized Homophobia, Intrigue, M/M, One Shot, Original Character(s), Politics, Racist Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-02
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 08:17:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2222010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxymoronic/pseuds/oxymoronic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four years down the line, and patience within the coalition is wearing very thin; but when Adam and Fergus try to slide their loyalties to Labour, the results are even more disastrous still.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Essentially: pseudo-political Inbetweeners-centric melodramatic nonsense, with boys being idiots about their sentiments and much ensuing drama. Plus some gratuitous lesbians, because femslash is far too thin on the ground in this fandom. I warn anyone interested in Jamie and Malcolm that they're a cameo at best. 
> 
> HUGE thanks have to go to wishwellingtons for the endless amounts of support throughout writing this (and indeed all the prior help with F&A's characterisations), I'm so unspeakably grateful. 
> 
> As suggested in the tags, it sometimes suffers from slightly crude humour down racist and homophobic lines (not to mention foul language), but nothing worse than what's in the show.

The evening, on the whole, is a mixed success. Any success at all is largely due to the fact Malcolm is no longer present; any hint of an accent north of Bristol has an uncanny ability to make Fergus shit himself, but there is something particularly and peculiarly awful in his mind about Mr. Tucker, whose brief stay at Her Majesty’s Expense is still not far enough in the distant past to be forgotten at such political gatherings. The majority of Adam’s intense but metaphorical blowjobs are thus performed on Oliver Reeder, a fact which nearly has Adam running for the fucking door the moment they cross the threshold. “I literally cannot do this,” Adam says, and it’s such a wonderful (if brief) role reversal that Fergus cannot help but be anything other than insufferably smug.

“It’s for the good of the country,” Fergus deadpans in reply, a line Adam is fond of delivering to him in moments of political crisis, although usually with far more humour. Adam looks as if he’s about to thump him; Fergus makes a run for the canapés, treasuring the look on Adam’s face for a moment of later triumph.

Once established and sufficiently laden with small, pinkish pastry things Adam would disapprove of – he’s technically dieting, _again_ – he uses his newfound vantage point to not-so-subtly survey the surrounding scene. It’s a sign of the times that Mr. Miller himself is entirely absent. The majority of tight-trousered, slick-haired wankers populating the room are quite clearly from his entourage, the ubiquitous Mr. Reeder at their head looking disgustingly popular and preening endlessly at the attention. On closer inspection, one small, particularly dim acolyte literally serves the function of holding his drink; Fergus tries and fails to cover his look of deep disgust. The dark-haired, scowling woman stood beside Fergus but abstaining from the refreshments looks equally disgusted, and he is at least vaguely reassured by the fact that One Of Their Lot is as repulsed by Reeder as he and Adam are.

“It’s almost enough to make you miss Malcolm,” she says unprompted, and Fergus falls into a familiar hell of trying to work out what the fuck he says to (as he, and his now-deceased grandfather, honestly mentally describe her as) someone of the female persuasion.

“Right,” he manages, shakily, with what must be a lopsided, lecherous grin; she throws him a sharp look. That’s it, he thinks, miserably. Court case, career cancer. Adam’ll complain about not being able to leave him alone for five minutes for the fifteenth time this week. He’ll end up fired, and probably in jail, and not a nice one like Tucker’s. Somewhere grotty and aggressively homoerotic. Adam probably won’t even visit him.

“You’re at DoSAC, aren’t you?” she asks, and Fergus is so busy being terrified about imminent shower buggery it takes him a minute to realise she’s said something that wasn’t connected to a restraining order.

“Er,” he replies, eloquently. “Yes?”

“I’m not part of the Miller brigade,” she says, rummaging for something in what Fergus is certain is an incredibly fashionable handbag, “but I might be preferable to chatting up Olly Reeder.” She hands him a card, and when Fergus sees it has her – one Helen Hatley’s – number on he has a mild, hysterical crisis she might be asking him out on a date. “I assume you’re not here for the sodding caviar,” Helen adds, rolling her eyes, but she’s also smiling, which probably means Fergus has avoided imminent incarceration. Fergus decides not to tell her the caviar is, as ever at the FCO, entirely sub-standard. Adam keeps reminding him not to make offhand comments that betray the fact he could pick out a grapefruit straw from a lineup.

Speak of the devil; Adam’s bearing down on him, and the quiet look of desperation on his face coupled with the smug haze radiating off Olly in the corner suggests he might’ve been less than successful in his mission of ingratiating himself to Miller’s cause. “What was that about not leaving before ten?” Fergus murmurs to him, grinning, as Adam grabs his arm and steers him towards the exit. In Adam’s defence, he does then hustle Fergus into the first bathroom he finds and gives him a very-not-metaphorical blowjob until the small hand hits the hour.

Adam’s quiet in the car home, staring gloomily off into the middle distance in a funk Fergus assumes is still caused by having to not only put up with but downright flatter his arch nemesis.  Fergus settles back against the sharp-scented leather and, deciding to avoid argument, tries uselessly not to fall asleep. He hasn’t told Adam about Helen’s card in his pocket, yet. He’s hoping to spin it out into an extensive strategy meeting that means they won’t have to talk about sodding Porcelain Playgrounds with Mannion for three hours tomorrow morning.

 

 

 

Aside from the most casual of conversations, Emma has not spoken to Peter Mannion for two very long, very pleasant years. She’d assumed this was a mutually beneficial relationship not to be broken for anything aside from imminent invasion from China, until, to her horror, literally stumbles into him on her way to JB’s morning meeting, and then subsequently discovers with mounting dread that this is no unhappy accident; rather, he is in fact looking for her.

“Adam was chatting up thingummy last night at the FCO do,” he says to her instantly, and with a look of great despair to Theo, Mary’s aide, she finds an empty office to drag Peter into and hopes to god she can make this quick. “I can’t remember his _name_ ,” Peter says, somewhat miserably, staring in mute appeal at Emma. Her first response is to ask whether someone else might be able to help him recover from temporary amnesia before the start of the next decade, but she’s more than slightly certain the only person Peter has in her absence is Phil. “You know, with the – _hair_. And the glasses. _Your_ chap.”

“Olly Reeder,” Emma says slowly, trying to avoid the nauseous horror at the idea that he might still be known by some as _her chap_. That said, this is Peter. He’s about as plugged in to modern politics as her extremely bigoted and somewhat senile grandmother.

“He’s up to something,” Peter replies with a dogged squint; Emma meanwhile is trying to remember whether any of JB’s reasons for still keeping him at DoSAC are legitimate enough for her not to fire him on the spot. “And I want _you_ to find out what.”

Laughing in his face would be puerile, Emma decides. It’s literally the only thing that allows her to keep her voice level as she says, quite calmly but rather slowly, “I know you can be a bit slow with change sometimes, Peter, but I don’t actually work for you anymore.”

He’s wearing a seedy grin of triumph she absolutely does not like the look of. “You’ll do this for me anyway,” he says, looking smug, or at least more so than usual. “Because if you don’t, I’ll send Geoffrey at _The Guardian_ some polaroids of you in lingerie sitting on Michael’s face.”

Emma’s stomach lurches viciously. She _hasn’t_ , not even in the least, not even when drunk; her position in Westminster is precarious enough currently without her flinging her knickers at a career-doomed Liberal Democrat. But she’s willing to bet her colleagues would think it of her, and the tabloids certainly would. The authenticity of either the accusation or whatever spurious evidence Peter could manage to fabricate would be irrelevant, even if she did manage to successfully get a retraction; the damage would be done. She’d be back in the Millbank typing pool, her career ended by the stilton-bloated, gurning form of Peter Mannion MP.

 “I’ll talk to Olly,” Emma spits through gritted teeth after a moment of furious silence, more angry at herself for even momentarily giving ground than Peter for his piss-poor, badly-handled attempt at blackmail.

“Good girl,” Peter says brightly in reply, thus cementing his doomed career even further in her convictions. Fuck a quiet early retirement come spring; she is getting him fired before the year is out. “ _Do_ say hi to Mary for me.”

It is literally only the imagined look on her mother’s face (disappointed, but also unsurprised, as if it were only a matter of time) that saves her from kneeing Peter in the gut and diverts her to the nearest bathroom instead, where she stares white-knuckled and livid at her own reflection and resists the infantile urge to throw a punch. She’s no longer allowed to be prone to tantrums. Her phone chirps; Theo, asking why she’s not sat in a room with JB prepping the overbred, oily fucker for PMQs. Peter failed to present her with a deadline, and she can deal with the Reeder situation at a later date. Perhaps by then she’ll have moved past her stomach turning at even the thought of speaking to him again.

 

 

 

 

Constituency business is, in the general sentiment, a politician’s worst nightmare; but Fergus it seems is entirely unique in holding an odd fondness for the people of Eastbourne. He will readily admit that constituency sessions do tend to attract the sort who want to complain about the colour of concrete in their local bus shelter, or that the ancient and crumbling clock in the town centre is running a whole three minutes late, but Fergus doesn’t mind this as much as spite and politics and Westminster intrigue and the dramas which usually define his hectic days. All they want is a sympathetic ear, and Fergus is, generally, well-liked, which gives him an uncanny ability to convince his constituents either that their issues will be dealt with in all haste or, more commonly, that they aren’t really that much of a bother at all.

Six a.m. starts are, therefore, usually firmly on the list of Fergus’ most despised aspects of his life in politics, especially in combination with impromptu media appearances; but this particular instance, a half-hour interview with _The Eastbourne Herald_ on the upcoming reconstruction of the tennis courts, is leaving him feel rather uncharacteristically chipper. Adam, by contrast, is sulking, probably as an after-effect of the Reeder run-in a few nights previously. He keeps throwing Fergus dour looks, as if affronted by his very existence.

“Let’s try and keep this one simple, yeah?” Adam asks tetchily, frozen mid-step and caught up in replying to something on his phone on their way out of the otherwise-empty DoSAC office. “We’ve got that sodding meeting with _Work and Pensions_ this afternoon, and I’d rather spend the morning making sure you don’t put your foot in it with the fucking Thatcherites later than cleaning up after an avoidable mess with some Murdoch-aspiring wankstain from the middle of fucking nowhere.”

It’s unlike Adam to shit on Eastbourne; unlike either of them, really, now they’re not forced to live in a grotty flat down there for months on end with primitive wifi and a poor excuse for a social life. Eastbourne is quick, clean, and often reasonably fun, as much as Fergus’ political life can be, and Adam is rarely so cruel. Fergus gallantly begins to launch to its defence, but at that moment Adam pockets his phone, turns back towards him; Adam’s shirt is pale blue, and loose at the collar – not, of course, that Fergus is intimately familiar with his wardrobe – and with this motion, however slight, it shifts minutely to reveal a large red mark on his neck which Fergus immediately pretends not to have noticed, his gut plummeting towards the floor.

Adam has a mark on his neck, and Fergus didn’t put it there.

The main problem with Fergus getting shirty about this is that technically they aren’t – _a thing_ ; a vague and euphemistic term which is as close as Fergus’ mind can ever deal with approaching the subject. Not truly. Occasionally, Adam will sink to his knees in the back bathroom of some Tory’s estate, or he’ll allow Fergus to fuck him into the mattress, usually the one in Fergus’ master bedroom. This is as complex as they’ve ever allowed it to become, and it is perfectly within Fergus’ remit to also find someone capable of participating in vampiric necksucking still visible the morning after. He just doesn’t. “Your fly’s undone,” Fergus blurts shortly, petty and bitter and more than a little desperate. Adam throws him a look which manages to convey both that Fergus is being infantile whilst also somehow apportioning him the blame; very unfairly, given that Fergus has had nothing to do with Adam’s trousers in nearly twelve hours. Fergus briefly and distractedly reflects that this should probably not be a congratulatory affair.

“Just please,” Adam says as they reach the lift, hand tracking through his hair and a faint note of despair in his voice. “Nothing racist. Nothing sexist. Nothing – ” _Homophobic_ , Fergus completes automatically, and then watches with surprise as Adam seems to flush, break off, lose both his voice and any ability to look Fergus’ way. “Newsworthy,” Adam says, eventually. But he still won’t look him in the eye.

Later, Fergus will note that his tie is askew in the photograph accompanying the rather mediocre article printed on page sixteen of a newspaper nobody reads. Adam, for once, says nothing on the matter at all.

 

 

 

Given Emma’s slightly terrifying credentials and widespread web of Westminster contacts, it’s hardly beyond her power to find a phone number for Olly Reeder; it’s cowardice rather than capability that leaves her awkwardly balanced against a ubiquitous white-stone wall round the back of Richmond Terrace, clutching at a cigarette a good ten months after she’d last promised herself she’d quit for good. It’s been a week since Peter cornered her, and it’s taken this long to work up the nerve to try and catch the attention of the last man on the planet she’d ever want to speak to, alongside the handy, nonspecific excuse of another doomed-to-failure balding MP’s self-help book launch. Olly appears to have entered some sort of exclusive masturbation arrangement with Miller, or she’d have expected to walk in the room to find said balding MP with his wine-red pants down his ankles and Olly chafing his knees on the floor.

She’s gone for her only remaining push-up bra and v-necked, skintight dress; for better men than Olly, she wouldn’t have insulted their intelligence, but for all his slick-gel, sharp-suited looks, she’s still almost entirely certain he’s had nothing to do with a naked woman not posed seductively on a laptop screen since 2009 and Tom’s pre-election barbeque. Unfortunately, the past three days of psyching herself up to actually _flirt_ with him promptly dissolved into a cold sweat the minute she laid eyes on the greasy monstrosity across the room, and she’d hastily retreated to the back alley, bad habits, and a mainly-G-with-some-T to wash back the roiling nausea.

This being London, the majority of passers-by have ignored her entirely; but she’s eventually approached by a well-dressed woman with long, dark hair, held up elegantly by her flattering but sensible heels. Emma desperately wants to call her Hilda, but that cannot be a name still used in modern-day society. She’s looking at Emma pointedly, her own cigarette caught between two very long fingers, and Emma only quite clocks how drunk she is when it takes her an embarrassingly long time to realise she’s asking for a light.

“Didn’t have you for the type,” definitely-not-Hilda says, blowing smoke in a way that’s enchantingly suave in Emma’s current state.

“I’m not,” Emma replies, who is, by contrast, trying desperately not to choke. “Well. Usually.”

“I meant more _that_ than _that_ ,” she says, amused, gesturing from Emma’s almost-escaping breasts to the cigarette. Helen, Emma remembers, almost absently. And an alliterating surname. She’d put money on Olly having launched himself at her with a bad Troy-related pick-up line at a Christmas party. She hopes Helen stamped on his feet. A brief glance down, and she’s readmiring the inherently sensible heels; she’s still certain Helen could end dynastic lines with them, even if they do look like they came from M&S.

The drink in Emma’s hand is long-gone, and the cigarette is almost burning her fingers. Helen seems to catch her mournful look back towards the doorway; she smiles, says, “You look as unhappy at the idea of heading back in there as I am.”

Emma in her old age must be getting exceptionally dense; she turns back to Helen with a half-formed story about Oliver Reeder on her tongue, and it takes Helen pushing her up against the wall, one hot hand already firm against the small of Emma’s back, for Emma to realise this was all slightly more than smalltalk. Helen’s mouth tastes ashy from the cigarette, and though she’d thought Helen was perfectly sober, there’s a tacky, sweet tang of alcohol behind it, and it licks the edges of her shaky breath when they pull apart again. “At the risk of sounding slightly gauche,” Helen murmurs, and Emma thinks she might already be a little in love, “how about we find something else to do instead?”

None of this, of course, gets her any close to what Adam was doing on his knees on Tuesday night aside from sliding Fergus’ dick in his mouth, but this is not something which occurs to Emma until several hours later, gracelessly sprawled across a rumpled double bed and watching Helen brush out the tangles from her hair across the room. Helen’s bed; Helen’s hairbrush. Emma is fully aware she can’t turn up to her scheduled lunch in the barely-there dress now inside-out and abandoned on the other side of the room, but the idea of moving, of finding or calling a cab, is currently quite beyond her.

Helen stands, looks back towards her with a smile; her every movement is painfully graceful. Emma’s never felt so clumsy, so poorly put-together in her life. Her floral-print, black silk dressing gown is ungirt at the waist, falls loosely around her naked frame, and Emma wants desperately to fuck her, as if that weren’t what they’d spent the past few hours doing already.

“Coffee?” Helen asks past the phone clamped between her teeth, hands busy as she gathers her hair loosely into a bun; a brief glance at the clock confirms to Emma she has a few hours yet, and she can’t remember the last time she spent a lazy Sunday. She’s sorely tempted. “Or we could shower first,” Helen continues, mouth flickering slightly into a smile, and with that, Emma’s afternoon is essentially fucked.

Needless to say, she never makes it to lunch.

 

 

 

Fergus is taking it as a sign of his failing career that for the first time in eighteen months he’s sufficiently unburdened to drive the thirty-odd miles from London to spend Sunday lunch with his parents, in what he learnt swiftly to cease calling their country house. Not that he himself is driving; Adam’s sat behind the wheel, whilst he’s been designated the equally important but also somehow infantile task of keeping safe the two white boxes balanced across his knees, intended to service the hobbies his parents had aggressively taken up in later years to stave off the immense boredom of life in High Wycombe. They are, of course, running late. This is in his opinion categorically Adam’s fault, although he himself would argue that the very nature of why they’re late requires them both to be complicit.

Fergus glances briefly over at his designated driver, thrumming out something unpatterned and nonsensical on the steering wheel with his drumming fingers as they hover in wait at the M40 turning. Adam’s met his parents before, so frequently in fact that this ritual is quite familiar; Adam always spends the final few minutes before their arrival nervous and tetchy, despite the fact Fergus’ mother has wanted Adam to proverbially cuckold her son since she first laid eyes on him. This had in part actually led to the installation of Fergus’ satnav, because the arguments caused by Fergus’ apparently catastrophic mapreading often stranded them on impractically icy terms for days, leaving Fergus horribly guilt-ridden and also uneasily, vaguely aware of just how often they are in contact by the mere fact of Adam’s brief absence.

There’s no one to greet them as they pull in through the driveway, but the front door’s a touch ajar and Harry, his father’s now slightly ancient black Labrador, barrels through the gap to greet them as soon as he hears the engine stop. The three of them crunch round in silence to the back of the house, and find Fergus’ mother in the kitchen, smoking idly through a window with one eye still on the oven door. Diane Williams is bonily thin, and her hair, though now turning to grey, had originally held the same off-red as Fergus’; the curliness he gets from his father, Reginald, along with the chubby impression of centuries of upper-class inbreeding. “It’s beef,” she says in reply to Fergus’ unanswered question the moment they’ve finished saying hello, and Adam’s face lights up; his favourite.

Adam hands her the gift, a small hand-crafted porcelain dove, a contribution to his mother’s extensive (and in his opinion slightly pointless) collection of ceramic birds finely displayed above the living room fireplace; then he’s bullied out of the kitchen and out from under his mother’s feet, although Adam, ever the favourite, naturally gets to stay and lay the table. “Your father’s in the shed,” she says with a pointed look, glaring down the bottom of the garden, and Fergus slinks off towards the squatting wooden hulk sulkily. His father’s shed contains the large model railway his mother had long since declared an eyesore, and which Fergus isn’t allowed to breathe near in case his inherent incompetence causes some system-wide catastrophic failure. His father accepts his gift – a rare edition of a post-office piece Adam tracked down on eBay – with a customary solemn nod of thanks, and Fergus watches him carefully install it in silence until Adam comes to fetch them for dinner.

Fergus’ younger years had seen him in a flat in Belgravia, but aged eleven he’d moved to the house in High Wycombe; and as much as he loves London, there are times when he craves the quiet of the countryside. He spends the afternoon slumped in a sunchair propped up in the shade of the sprawling, well-groomed yew tree (he’d originally tried for a spot in the sun, but both Adam and his mother had made him choose between regular and monitored applications of suncream or peace and quiet in the shade) whilst Adam and his mother get raucously drunk on the patio. The leftover beef stretches to sandwiches at five, and then Fergus and Adam set out in the dying light to take Harry for a walk in the nearby fields before beginning the trek back to London.

“Your mum thinks Labour’s a good move,” Adam says as they break the crest of the hill a little behind Harry.

Fergus raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t think you were talking politics.” Adam shrugs in reply, which means something and nothing, and Fergus resists the urge to roll his eyes. It all feels strangely meaningless here, petty Westminster battles over seating arrangements in Cabinet and whether Fergus’ speech used the wrong preposition set against the sun at their backs and so much empty space. They stand and wait as Harry tires himself out, and although Adam’s now more tipsy than drunk, Fergus notes he’s standing slightly closer than necessary nonetheless.

He’s quiet in the car again, which Fergus usually would take as a bad sign if they hadn’t just visited his parents. It’s only when they’re drawing closer to London that Adam speaks up, a quiet note that he needs to head back to the flat, if Fergus doesn’t mind dropping him. This means that Fergus will be alone tonight; he tries not to dwell on the lurch of disappointment, doesn’t fuss at all when he pulls over by a swanky new-money highrise round the back of Shepherd’s Bush. Adam does have a life besides him, he thinks, trying and failing to concentrate on the late-night traffic. He just wishes he could remember more easily the last time they spent more than two nights apart.

 

 

 

In general, on principle, Emma loves her job; adores it. Certainly she loves it infinitely more than being crippled and chained by Peter Mannion, and the half-decade of her life she spent shadowing – not even _running_ – sodding DoSAC. On this particular Monday morning, however, she’s not exactly awash with enthusiasm at the concept of functioning as the crux of a well-meaning but ultimately hopeless media team with the doomed task of making JB appear both human and modern; this is in part because of the series of candids of him playing polo on the weekend which made the centerfold of the _Sunday Express_ (there is still a very small part of Emma’s conscience which doesn’t understand why precisely this is considered newsworthy), but it has more to do with the fact that last night was the first time she’d returned to her unused bed in her own flat for a week and a half.

Emma stares moodily down at the tasteful black-and-white photographs of an African village whose name she considers unpronounceable, artfully depicting with the heavy use of cleverly-chosen angles a rather ramshackle orphanage, poorly-constructed at the taxpayer’s unwitting expense as the product of JB’s latest pet project. Not shown, of course, are the heavily-rotting roof beams and non-waterproof tiling which can’t even withstand the summer, never mind the colder and wetter months. She’s meant to be writing the accompanying copy; allegedly a personal interview with the PM himself about the charitable causes which intimately drive his moral compass, although Emma knows for a fact he has called Titilayo, the Nigerian woman responsible for the weekly clean of his office, “a fucking Paki”, and then laughed when one of the staffers worked up the urge to point out this was (at the very least) factually inaccurate. Emma loves her party, but would be amongst the first to admit that a good ninety-five percent of its members – including their illustrious PM – have never mentally left the seventeenth century.

Speaking of rampant party racism; footsteps in the hall, and Emma glances up keenly at her rescuer to see Theo, Mary’s aide, approaching with a cheerful expression and a clipboard under one arm. Twentysomething and the son of two Pakistani immigrants, Theo had abandoned his actual birthname shortly after leaving Oxford (2:1, PPE, a degree taken more to please his parents than out of any future ambitions, political or otherwise) and arriving in Westminster. Given his choice of party loyalty, this was probably wise; Emma had watched the entirety of _Life on Mars_ with Phil during their brief, unpleasant time as flatmates, and he had on more than one occasion announced that Glen was “funny for a coloured chap” with no apparent irony whatsoever.

Theo props himself against the side of Emma’s desk, arms crossed, and there’s a look in his eye which Emma suspects means trouble. “There’s someone here to see you,” Theo says, and Emma stares at him. “They’re round the back, near the delivery entrance. I offered to bring them in, but they didn’t want to know. All very _Tinker,_ _Tailor_.”

Emma’s first, dreaded instinct had been Peter; she had, after all, completely failed to report even the smallest bit of information back to him. But there’s no reason why Peter would be against ducking around party HQ, not even with the resurfaced barrage about the affair – a different one to the clusterfuck responsible for the lovechild – and besides, Theo wouldn’t look half as amused if it was, unless he thought she was having some sort of sordid affair with her former employer. She resists a full-body retch at the thought.

All becomes rather more clear when she emerges into the shady back-alley to find Helen propped up against a brick wall at the far end, long hair loose around her shoulders save for a butterfly clip and a half-finished cigarette between her fingers. She waves when Emma approaches, her mouth widening as she pushes away from the wall; it’s warm, but licked with the slight smirk ubiquitous of Helen’s smiles. “You shouldn’t be here,” Emma says, and she’s aware it sounds half-hearted at best. She’s struggling not to stare at Helen’s mouth.

“I thought we could have lunch,” Helen says, the flicker of a definite smirk playing around her mouth at Emma’s blurted opening line. “ _Away_ from the office.” She takes a quick, final drag of the cigarette, stamps it out beneath her heel. “I know a nice place up by Covent Garden, if it appeals?”

Emma thinks back to the office, stuffy in the summer heat and filled with exploitative photographs of half-starving orphans she’s meant to be endorsing to a media already biased in their favour.  There must’ve been something desperate in her expression; before she receives a vocal reply, Helen’s smile is widening, and her arm extends towards the end of the alleyway, inviting her on.

That she reacts to Helen’s unexpected presence with somewhat starved desperation gives Emma no small amount of concern, especially when once the meal is done Helen announces she’s staying put, and Emma feels a little robbed of her company on the dreary walk back to Westminster. She takes a deliberately circuitous route by the river, studiously ignoring the increasingly passive-aggressive emails from the office chirping sporadically up on the specially-granted phone in her pocket. Helen had invited her to lunch; Helen must have missed her, too. Emma allows her face briefly to cleave into a small smile, but takes care to school her expression as she passes along the Embankment, turns back west towards the white stone walls of Whitehall.

 

 

 

Regardless of party, regardless of decade, that DoSAC is a hot mess of a sinking ship is an unvarying fact of the universe. When Fergus arrives on Monday morning to discover that the W&P lot have reached situation critical with the teachers’ unions and that is somehow _DoSAC_ ’s fault and not the DoE’s, Fergus (whilst being entirely unsurprised) takes sole solace in the fact that the dubiously-worded pensions review that had indeed passed through his department had been signed off on Peter’s watch, and not his; thus Peter’s desk is the one surrounded by shrill-sounding telephones and nameless staffers with maudlin expressions, whilst his office is wonderfully, beautifully bare.

His handful of texts to Adam on the subject receive no reply; this needn’t be worrying, given that Adam should technically be a good few feet underground on some hellish commuter battery farm cage at this time of the morning, as is the habit when he’s slept at Shepherd’s Bush. As per, Fergus studiously decides not to fret, and concentrates on having coffee in the pot and having flicked through the morning’s Hansard before Adam’s arrival. Both of these he achieves with reasonable success; Adam’s face is bright and clear when he does finally roll in, making a dive for the coffee-pot with a muttered word of thankful appreciation.

They share a moment’s blissful happiness in the not-so-faint noises of Peter’s misery, before settling down to the more humdrum affair of the day’s business. The morning is theirs, and undefined; they’ve some spending reviews on inner-city bike lane repair to appraise (another stinking pile of rats dumped in their lap under the citizenship brief from Transport, thank-you- _very_ -much to the kind-faced but apparently cold-hearted Sunita in accounts), and Adam seems hell-bent on rehearsing the speech for Conference until Fergus is a wordless husk. The afternoon has him in party politics nonsense on the run-up to Conference, playing happy families with Michael, a man who still sorely wants to toss Fergus to the not-so-proverbial dogs, and the half a dozen other ex-alcoholics and over-hopeful liberals who form the most politically significant presence of the junior Coalition party. And Stanley Haymarket, placed in charge of DECC in order to be thoroughly and solely blamed for global warming in a decade’s time, and who consequently always looks ever-so-slightly harangued.

“So you’ve got a bit free around one,” Adam says, and the deliberate slowness to his tone means Fergus is supposed to be deriving some special importance from his words. “I thought we might catch up with _a mutual friend_.”

Fergus casts around wildly and, as usual, falls entirely short. “That sounds nice,” he says, weakly. Adam looks at him with a familiar expression of mild despair, until – _oh_. Helen. Right. Political espionage. The idea makes his stomach turn.

Unsurprisingly, the direction of Fergus’ inner organs has no reflection on Adam’s aims for his career, and thus he finds himself stepping out into an unfairly bright landscape of Westminster sunshine to be subsequently smuggled down a back-alley, emerging only back into the light when faced with the small café picked entirely because of its distance from Westminster. Fergus worriedly runs his eye across the other patrons; there’s no one he recognises, but with his head for faces this isn’t exactly bolstering his confidence. Helen herself is sat a few tables back from the window, elegantly and occasionally drinking what looks like iced coffee through a straw in a manner which makes Fergus’ heart ache from jealousy at the sheer gracefulness. Needless to say, when Fergus does eventually receive his drink, a good portion of it ends up on his shirt. Adam doesn’t even bother with the ubiquitous look of despair.

“Michael has to go, of course,” Helen says the moment niceties have been exchanged, and Adam and Fergus stare at her with similarly dumbstruck expressions. “Well, he hates you, for one, and he can’t lead your party into the next election without fucking them twelve ways to Sunday, no matter what his press team continues to insist about his popularity. If you set up a new coalition under a new leader, you’re taking a step in a different direction. If you keep the old one, you’re u-turning. Not to mention desperate.”

Fergus and Adam exchange a look. It makes sense, Adam seems to say; Fergus is inclined to agree. He just hadn’t expected it – her – to be quite so cruel. “Who would you have instead?” Adam asks.

Helen shrugs. “You know your party better than I do. I couldn’t care less, so long as it’s not him. You’ve got Conference in – what, a month?”

“Three weeks,” Fergus corrects dully; he’s required to give a speech. On national television. Adam’s been training him for it since Christmas.

“Well, that’s it, then,” she says with confidence, settling back in her chair. “Ideal time for him to stand down is in Glasgow in three weeks’ time. In the meanwhile, you need to start shitstirring around his name both in the press and within the party. Favourably to those inclined towards a new coalition, obviously. I’ll do the same on – ”

“Does it have to be Miller?” Adam says thoughtfully, staring off into the middle distance; this would never even have occurred to Fergus, whose closest experience to espionage comes from the unread le Carré boxset his parents gave him for Christmas. “I know a few who like Labour, but – ”

“Too soon,” Helen interrupts, shaking her head. “Both to Murray’s departure – ” The use of surname is almost as revealing as if she’d used her first; Fergus attempts to take a mental note. “ – and the election. You’ll have to work with it. Once we’re in power, however…”

Adam nods, shares a sage look of understanding with her which passes quite soundly over Fergus’ head. With their business largely done, Helen departs; Adam allows them to stay long enough for Fergus to wolf down a low-calorie wrap, and then they resume the brief trudge back through the still-sunny London streets to the inexorable bubble of Westminster. As time passes in the wake of Helen’s suggestion, the part of Fergus’ mind which is, quite frankly, filled with fear at the notion continues to morph and grow. Adam seems entirely nonplussed; his attention is already on his phone, likely testing the waters of half a dozen politicos Fergus doesn’t even know.

Adam turns to him as they hover by the traffic lights on Trafalgar Square, and there’s a moment where Fergus thinks he’s about to kiss him; then he leans down, says quietly in Fergus’ ear, “it could be _you_ , you know,” and Fergus nearly falls in front of a speeding cyclist from shock.

It could be, though, Fergus reflects, once Adam has lectured him extensively (and not for the first time) on road safety and returned to ignoring him, his eyes and fingers on his phone. Fergus is more than a little surprised to find the idea fills him with almost as much excitement as it does with dread.

 

 

 

“How long have Fergus and Adam been shagging?” Helen asks, and Emma raises her head to throw her a disbelieving stare.

“Really,” Emma says flatly, settling back on her haunches and running her unoccupied hand through her hair. “You want to talk about Adam Kenyon _now_.”

In every other respect, Helen does look entirely fucked; spread out on her back, one hand clutching the headboard and the other hovering fitfully beside her waist, as if she wants to grab at Emma’s hair but daren’t allow herself to. “It’s more Fergus, actually,” she says, though to Emma’s credit it’s more of a pant; she changes the angle of her fingers, and is rewarded by a half-gasped moan. “You know I – oh, _fuck_ – have a thing for r-redheads – Je _sus_ – ! ”

The conversation understandably does not properly resume until a handful of hours later; the both of them are nestled on opposing sofas, keeping up a careful balancing act with laptops and bowls of pasta. “What’s got you interested in the Chuckle Brothers, anyhow?”

It takes a moment for Helen to put two and two together; then she shoots Emma a small smile over her laptop screen. “They aren’t _that_ awful, you know. Fergus can be quite – ”

“Moronic?” Emma interjects; Helen throws her a quelling look.

“Sweet, I was going to say.” She finishes off the pasta, places the bowl on a worryingly teetering pile of old folders and newspaper cuttings. “I met with them earlier, after our lunch. To talk coalition. God help them, though, they’re about as politically qualified as Janet Street-Porter. No wonder they wound up saddled with DoSAC.” Helen shoots Emma a quick grin. “No offence,” she adds, but Emma is far past the point of listening; she’s been trapped in the word _coalition_ ever since it fell from Helen’s mouth. Turns out her information was as reliably up-to-date as intelligence from Peter Mannion should be expected to be; but she’s somehow stumbled upon the not-so-secret backchannel Westminster talks he’d highly suspected were carrying on nonetheless.

Helen seems not to have noticed her silence; she apparently doesn’t care much about the information her question asked for, or not enough to press the point. Emma sits frozen with her fingers resting loosely on her laptop keys, staring blankly down at the white-bright screen.  Although this puts her in a unique but above all useful position, she has only acquired this information because Helen trusts her to keep it.

She bites her lip. The cynical side of her says this is fundamentally Helen’s fault; but there’s a less rational part of her which feels vaguely nauseous at the idea of betraying her trust. Still, she supposes, rubbing her eyes and alt-tabbing to her browser to fire up her email. It won’t hurt to give Peter just enough to keep the heavily-photoshopped candids of her and the Lib Dem leader landing on JB’s desk.

 

 

 

This is, in general, how it happens:

Firstly, they have to be working late, notwithstanding the fact it’s been a decade and a half since Fergus clocked off at six. From the office, Adam must be in risk of missing the last tube; from Fergus’, the last bus. Both scenarios ignore the twenty-four hour buses which run regularly to Shepherd’s Bush seven days a week and would drop Adam directly at his front door. In the former, despite their more than comfortable salaries, they’ll come to a mutual decision that taking two taxis home is uneconomical; in the latter, it’ll make sense for Adam to stay the night, and travel with Fergus to Westminster come morning.

There is a spare room in Fergus’ house, but the bed in it lies almost entirely untouched; Adam has never used it. The ensuite to the master bedroom – Fergus’ room – has a spare toothbrush belonging to Adam, by practice but not by name. They’ll take turns in the ensuite despite the second bathroom down the hall; during Fergus’ turn, Adam will lie fully-clothed on top of the duvet, shoes kicked off onto the floor, performing a final readthrough of the emails of the day and sending snarky, griping comments to Fergus next door. Fergus in turn will allow himself to climb into the bed, pushing down the duvet slightly on the other side as an open invitation; that Adam chooses to slip inside is active proof to him that he wants to stay.

Sometimes, one of them will rise silently from the mattress, pin the other down into it and kiss him, hot and slow, the yellow-orange light of the streetlamps bleeding through the ineffectual curtains and throwing odd shapes into the shadows clustering in the corners of the room. This is generally Adam, but not always. When they’re in the middle of more drunken lechery – though often not as drunk as they’d like to pretend – Fergus will allow himself the excuse to make noise; if not, he keeps silent, even as Adam’s fingers ease down his pyjama bottoms and take him in hand, soft, deliberate movements as if he’s afraid of spooking him, of scaring him away.

Often, however, they merely wind up falling into exhausted sleep a metre apart, as if they happen to share the same bed by chance. Invariably, at some point in the night Fergus will wake to find them tangled together; but by morning they’ll be separate once more, with no mention made of Fergus stirring awake at four a.m. to find Adam’s arm around his waist and his breath playing softly against the nape of Fergus’ neck.

 

 

 

The following weeks of Fergus’ life are choked with a heady mix of agonizingly tense intrigue contrasted against a background of unbearably tedious Westminster drudgery. Fergus will, for instance, be forced to segue quite naturally from a heads-down, intense bout of whispering with whichever member of the Lib Dems he’s managed to corner at Party HQ and half-bully, half-cajole into their party coup, to sitting around a glass-panelled table with Peter Mannion (who, regrettably, does not lose his job, despite being the chief proprietor of DoSAC fuck-up #9,893) and calmly and reasonably discuss the proposition that all postboxes in the Brixton area should be painted lilac in order to “dispel public tension”. It’s not uncommon for Fergus to feel slightly like he’s being shafted in several directions at once, but even he can’t help but feel notably out of his depth; Adam is, however, a constant through all of these, proverbially (and sometimes literally) holding his hand. Admittedly, this doesn’t say much; Fergus can no longer remember a time when he wasn’t.

Helen Hatley becomes somewhat of a surprising staple of his evenings, too. Fergus spends a good few days of her turning up at his house with takeaway and a strategy folder under one arm in a brief, mild panic she’s hoping to have some sort of scandalous affair with him, and is infinitely relieved when she appears to be quite focused on the business at hand. For all that she’s spent the last few years drifting unattached from Minister to Minister, and for all her close links to the Murray fiasco, she seems to have a remarkable amount of sway within her party; she presents them with at least two or three sympathetic MPs at each meeting, which always makes Fergus quite depressed about his own hard-wrought but ultimately meagre endeavours. She never comments on his far more glacial pace.

By the Friday of the second week, they’re sprawled in Fergus’ living room with a considerable portfolio of names scattered out on the floor beneath them. With a week to go til Conference, their particular task of the night is selecting Michael’s replacement. The notion itself seems to have rendered Adam uncharacteristically fidgety, shooting Helen scowling, fractious looks whenever her back is turned – not, in honesty, that he’s been the picture of civility for the rest of the week. He’d been all for Helen’s help at the start; he’d even been vaguely congratulatory about Fergus’ ability to not only hold a conversation with a woman for thirty seconds without her filing for harassment, but to make a significant political ally from it, too. Now, Fergus is lucky for the two of them to be in a room for more than five minutes without icy civility descending into an outright slanging match which Fergus is hopelessly inequipped to moderate.

Fervently ignoring Adam’s death-licked glares, Fergus surveys the photos spread out before them. They have, so far, decided a dozen or so of their co-conspirators to be too fat, too old, too unpopular, or, in one case, too honestly mental to stand a chance; they have five or so names left, including: a kindly-faced but terrifying woman currently stuck in Fishfuckeries; one of the three elected black MPs not currently forcibly filling a minorities quota for the otherwise very-white Cabinet; a dreary but competent black-suited old-school Minister whom Fergus has frequently mistaken for an accountant at Conference; and a slick-haired, well-toothed, Eton-educated tosspot whom Fergus abhors but has to admit is capable, experienced, and charismatic enough to both do the job well and do a world of good for the Lib Dems’ public image.

The fifth is Fergus’, although this has reached such colossal, elephantine status Fergus is half-expecting complementary trapeze artists to crash through the ceiling unannounced, or a ringmaster to leap up from under Fergus’ faux-antique low-slung sofa. “Rutland seems like your best bet,” Helen says, scooping her loose hair back behind her ear and pushing the appropriate photograph forwards into the centre of the carpet. “She’s capable, well-versed in party politics – ”

“Might look a bit desperate,” Adam interrupts bluntly, thumbing the corner of a portfolio of a now-abandoned candidate and staring at the floor. “Like we’re playing the minority card.”

“Because she’s a woman?” Helen asks archly, eyes narrowing, and Fergus resists the urge to scream; it’s been like this all evening, barely-civil logistics and an ever-present undercurrent of sniping, backhand comments.

“Maybe we should take it down to three,” Fergus says, sounding a touch frantic, desperate to keep the peace. “That might – help?”

Helen drags her eyes from Adam to shoot him a quick, unreadable look, and gets to her feet. “I’ll leave you to that,” she says, tone perfectly calm. It’d be completely legitimate for her to leave at half-ten on a Friday night, if it weren’t for the fact she’s stayed til midnight every other day of the week and it’s seven days and counting until Michael takes to the proverbial stand. “When’re you seeing Malcolm?”

“Wednesday,” Adam says calmly, and Fergus resists the urge to scowl at the faint note of triumph in his voice. They have the party coup in hand; but what they need is the impetus to make Michael step down without a fight. With more time, Adam had insisted he could’ve achieved this himself entirely without having to go crawling to the last man on earth he’d ever like to face again, but they haven’t the time for Adam to dig out his phonebook, and Malcolm has already confirmed he has what they need. Adam had been decided as their elected representative, at least in part because Fergus is often reduced to hysterical tears from mere proximity to the now-disbanded Caledonian mafia. Adam had grinned when he said this, a handful of days before, but he isn’t smiling now.

“Don’t fuck it up,” Helen says icily, a blatant disregard of the détente of civility they’ve been practicing all evening, and then juxtaposes her cold command with a smile in Fergus’ direction and the added wish they have a good weekend.

The silence escalates to a tangible level of awkward once she goes, leaving a pile of scattered takeaway boxes and abandoned portfolios in her wake. They still have work to do; they still have their five names to choose between. But Adam rises from the sofa without so much as a look in his direction and stalks around the room noiselessly, gathering up the débris. Fergus wants desperately to force him still, to kiss him, but they haven’t – they don’t, not unless one or both of them is drunk, not unless they’re already half-hard, half-naked, and sprawled inelegantly on Fergus’ bed. Fergus sets his jaw, clenches his fist, and surrenders.

That night, for the first time Fergus can remember, Adam sleeps on the sofa.

 

 

 

21 Tudor Street, Blackfriars is home to a glassy high-rise with a riverside view, a two-minute brisk walk from Goldman Sachs International and a stone’s throw from the London Stock Exchange. It is, most decidedly, not Westminster; although a keen eye would spot that for an area so supposedly linked with the banking heart of London, it takes twice as long to reach Canary Wharf as it does to walk to Whitehall.

Nevertheless, there’s no hint of anything but business in the cool, white-painted foyer Adam currently occupies, staring moodily at a tasteful panorama of what claims to be – and what Adam is perfectly willing to accept is – the Botswana College of Agriculture. What precise relevance this has to the company in whose headquarters he’s currently sat escapes him; what precisely Malcolm Tucker’s post-prison, post-Westminster occupation actually is has also passed him by, and he doesn’t expect somehow there’ll be much of a chance for small-talk this afternoon.

Presently, a quiet, dark-haired woman shepherds Adam through the tall glass doors, down an equally spartan, white-walled corridor, and into an office more modern and well-equipped than any Malcolm has ever held before, Downing Street or otherwise. Malcolm himself is sat in what Adam very much suspects to be an ergonomic chair, his white glass desk empty aside from a white Anglepoise, switched off, a Macbook, lid closed, and one unsealed white A4 envelope. Adam had expected them to be alone; he feels a sudden, instinctive rush of fear at the sight of the small, curly-haired man lounging against the corner of aforementioned desk, who squints at Adam very hard from the minute he crosses the threshold. He’s faintly certain the last time they were in such close proximity, Jamie MacDonald promised to push his head down a toilet the next time they met.

Malcolm wordlessly slides the envelope towards him, and Adam, flushing slightly, forces himself to stop gawking and pick it up; he flips it over, lets its contents slide out into his curved palm. The first of three papers is a list of shareholders’ stakes in one Esprit Global, a small but rather wealthy energy company with offices on four continents. A quick glance at the list confirms Michael’s wife owns 4.2%; but there’s nothing especially illegal about that, even if it is slightly and inadvisably tasteless. The second is a photograph of Michael, his wife, and a man Adam doesn’t recognise, somewhere undoubtedly sunny and hot; he flips it over to find pencilled on the back (in handwriting far too neat to be Malcolm’s) ‘Langdale, Mrs., & Cordon, Trinidad 02/07/95’. The final is a press release, dated around a month later, announcing the then-Tory government’s plans to extend help to the new wave of Qatari drilling projects in the south, the tenure just happening to go to a small, relatively unknown company by the name of Esprit Global under the leadership of one Robert Cordon.

Several years of investigative journalism – even if some of them were wasted at the _Mail –_ mean it doesn’t take long for Adam to join the dots, and he slides all three back into the envelope with a quick, grateful nod in Malcolm’s direction. In truth, it’s supposition at best; but as with all great Westminster scandals, there’s no requirement Michael ever be found guilty or innocent in a court of law. Reputation, in their business, is everything, and given that his career is already hanging by a thread, Adam imagines he’ll be more than happy to step aside without dragging his – and not to mention his wife’s – name through the mud.

The same dark-haired woman sees Adam out again with a brisk but kind smile, and Adam finds himself vomited back out into the old financial heart of London, trying to find a taxi back to Westminster in a sea of grey-haired men in slightly-shabby, unfashionable suits. It seems strange to find Malcolm in such a place; not even the beating heart of Canary Wharf itself, but undeniably further upstream, trapped in amongst old buildings – old men – desperately trying to make themselves seem functional and new. He hadn’t seen anything of Malcolm at all in the press in the past few months; it should come perhaps as no surprise that his media team is impeccable. But now he has, now he’s driven barely two miles up the road to find Malcolm Tucker, _the_ Malcolm Tucker, no longer the famed political behemoth but sat quiet and passive behind a desk, gutless and friendless, careerless and legacy-stripped in a soulless Blackfriars office, all steel and glass –

In truth, this is a largely unfair grasp of Malcolm Tucker’s life at present, and a different story would be rather more interested in the presence of the second, shorter Scotsman balanced at the side of his desk. But for Adam, watching the taxi pick its way through narrow backstreets and dodging pedestrians and cyclists alike, he cannot rid the vague, fearful notion that this is the ultimate end for all those occupied in their career – even those as well-connected as Malcolm. Defeat, ignominy, a tiny footnote in an occasionally-thumbed, out of date history book. And for what?

Adam only has Fergus; Adam is only doing this for Fergus. And for the past three weeks, Adam has begun to suspect he doesn’t really have Fergus at all.

 

 

 

At around the same time Adam is squeakily shifting on a leather sofa in Blackfriars, Helen Hatley arrives unscheduled at Fergus’ door. He doesn’t remember to acquit himself of the apron or bright yellow Marigolds before greeting her, and they earn him a sharp, amused look as she pushes herself off the brickwork and slips inside. She’s not meant to be here til eight; Fergus pointlessly reminds her of this irrelevant fact as he tails her, slightly helplessly, into the living room. “I thought we might run through your speech,” Helen says, and then watches, amused, as Fergus cycles from mild bemusement through to horrified comprehension. “Yes,” she says wryly, settling back in the comfiest armchair with a Cheshire-cat grin. “I thought you might’ve forgotten.”

This is how Adam finds them, some hours later; Fergus, devoid of Marigolds but still apron-clad, arms spread and orating loudly on DoSAC’s new stationery legislation (he wishes to god he were joking) and the harsh, gruelling affair of the sleeping policemen débacle to a largely stony-faced audience. He watches silently from the doorway as Fergus draws it to a painful close, then dumps his bag on the sofa and begins to rifle through it. Fergus, feeling uncomfortably self-conscious, swiftly strips himself of the apron.

“Didn’t we drop the taxicab joke on the grounds of, well, tastelessness and racism?” Adam asks lightly, except it’s anything but polite, licked with a hard, angry edge which Fergus instantly recognises and dreads.

“I liked it,” Helen replies smoothly. “Actually, it was the only part of it which didn’t make me want to gut myself.” Adam doesn’t reply; she flicks him a quick look, calculating. “How was Malcolm?”

“Insider trading.” He drops an envelope in her lap, and while Helen’s preoccupied scanning the contents, Fergus desperately tries and fails to meet Adam’s eye; his back’s hunched, hands on his hips, eyes on the floor. Helen makes a small, satisfied noise, and passes the envelope to Fergus. Although he pulls them out and scans through them at a similar speed, he has rather less joy in deciphering it; he sends a pleading look to the room in general, and Adam rolls his eyes. “He’s feeding Cordon information,” Adam says shortly, confiscating their evidence with an abrupt snatch and making Fergus feel even more like a giant, clumsy-limbed child. “He hands Cordon the governmental tenures – or everything he needs to win them – and then makes a killing off it through his wife’s shares. _Honestly_ , Fergus – ”

He’s only prevented from a full-on lecture by the sight of Helen holding out her hand, and then Fergus’ dumbfounded expression of five minutes previously is fleetingly echoed on Adam’s face. “It can’t look like it came from you,” she says, impatiently twitching her fingers. “He’ll kick it down as petty party politics, and you know as well as I do the MPs you’ve gathered won’t work on your behalf if he starts to question their loyalty directly. Give it to me, and I’ll – ” She smiles humourlessly. “Have a word.”

Adam hands it over in silence, expression entirely blank. If Fergus didn’t know better, he’d say Helen’s smile turns almost – triumphant.

She wishes them both a safe trip, and Fergus sees her to the door. He stares noiselessly at her warped figure through the tiny plaque of stained glass set in its centre, watching until she diminishes down the driveway and into the street beyond. Adam’s waiting for him at the foot of the stairs when he turns around, that vague, unreadable expression still caught on his face; then he advances towards him, shoves Fergus against the door with a rattling slam, and kisses him. They’re pressed against one another, one long tangled line, and when Adam pulls back, pushes his face into the crux of Fergus’ neck, Fergus can feel his breath against his collarbone, soft and warm. Adam’s hands are hot against his waist, fingers gentle half-circles pressed against his skin; he’s staring at Fergus, at his mouth, and they’re off script – they’re so off script – they’re sober and it’s barely after dark –

What follows is unsurprisingly brief. It features Fergus dropping to his knees, his hands on Adam’s thighs, pressing him back into the wall; a raw, hungry noise of surprise falling from Adam’s mouth at the rare, unprompted sight, Fergus sliding his fingers into the trousers now hanging loose around Adam’s hips; Adam’s fingers curling tightly in Fergus’ hair, thumb skimming over his mouth, tracing a soft line down Fergus’ jaw; and Adam coming in his mouth with a sharp, violent sound, a buck of his hips, a choked attempt at Fergus’ name.

Adam sinks to the floor, head falling back against the wall, his breath spilling loose and ragged. Fergus is still kneeling awkwardly in front of him, caught in between Adam’s splayed legs, half-hard and desperate, and he wants to reach forward, to touch him, to kiss him –

But Adam won’t look at him. Not even a glance, doesn’t even say his name. A hot, unnameable fear curls around Fergus’ gut, and it begins to dawn on Fergus that something is horribly, desperately wrong. Fergus drags himself upwards, staggers to the kitchen to rinse his mouth out; by the time he’s done, his pleasure from before is long since gone, replaced by a shaky, sick-like dread, clawing at the base of his stomach, wrapped darkly and pulling at his now-weak legs.

He hears Adam enter the room, and uses what little energy he has to turn and face him, namelessly afraid of what he’ll see. “Fergus,” Adam says, and he’s still staring at the floor, hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched. He does that when he’s nervous, Fergus thinks. He also thinks he might be sick. “I – _can’t_ , Fergus. Not anymore.”

“Right,” Fergus says, eloquent as ever. “ – yeah,” he adds, intensely examining his own kitchen tiles after Adam’s example. He’s trying frantically to sound nonplussed; Adam sounds so calm. So fucking nonchalant. “Okay.” There’s still a hot, sour taste in his mouth, and he’s definitely going to be sick. Just not in front of Adam, he thinks, desperately. Please not in front of him.

The universe grants him this, at least. Fergus doesn’t allow himself to look up, away from the pale cream flagstones which Adam helped him choose, and thirty interminable seconds later Adam is gone.

Fergus’ legs carry him as far as the downstairs toilet, where he’s copiously and violently sick, clutching at the bowl and shaking with the effort to stay upright. He shouldn’t be shocked, he thinks, forehead pressed against the cool porcelain. It’s always just been a matter of time. It should not feel as if the ground has been ripped from under him. Adam wasn’t _his_ ; that had always been perfectly clear to him. He was just lucky to ever have him near at all.


	2. Chapter 2

Eighteen days. Eighteen long, hellishly fucking mundane days since Emma had last contacted Peter Mannion, and he chooses this particular Thursday morning to corner her unwillingly in Party HQ. She tries to dismiss him with a “not _now_ , Peter” in her very best authoritarian, pseudo-nanny voice – she finds with the male Tories it’s often worth reaching directly for the inner, petulant child – but he peers at her in a sort of smug way and glances significantly at the Prime Minister’s office behind them. Taking the hint, Emma settles against the tasteless, striped wallpaper, arms crossed, scowling slightly, and waits for him to talk.

“All I need is a quick yes or no,” Peter says, his voice clawing at her nerves, “but the more you tell me now, the less we have to meet again. If ever.”

Emma rubs her eyes, runs a hand through her hair, and makes up her mind. “Yes,” she says heavily, throwing him a glare. “It’s them, and they’re talking coalition. There’s some sort of – party coup. Focusing around Conference.”

Peter’s eyes are glazed slightly from excitement; as she’d suspected, he’s planning to charge through to the offices behind her and present this to their ineffable leader, then make the most of the kudos he receives in the chaos to follow. “Who is it on the Labour side? Miller?”

Emma hesitates, and this, ultimately, is the worst thing she could do. She could probably have got away with a noncommittal noise, or an outright lie; then Peter would have gone with his own instincts, or be forced to do his own detective work. As it is, Peter notices the half a heartbeat’s pause, the indrawn breath; the look on his face becomes triumphant, and Emma is forced to tell the truth. “Helen Hatley,” Emma says resignedly, stomach sinking like a stone. “She’s been masterminding it all. I don’t think Miller has a clue.”

“Excellent work, Emma,” Peter drawls, claps her on the shoulder with a small smile, and swaggers off towards JB’s office with the good news. The truth is, it’s too little, too late – a fact Emma only discovers when Peter moves away, clears her line of sight, and reveals Helen, white-faced and shaking with rage outside of Michael Langdale’s doorway.

Emma’s stomach lurches; she knows instantly exactly how this looks. “It’s not what you think,” is Emma’s hurried line, the timeless excuse of the ages – but she can already tell it’s pointless. Helen’s put two and two together, and Emma really can’t blame her this time for making five.

“I should’ve seen it coming, really,” Helen replies, and though her voice is perfectly calm, Emma can see the arc of her shoulders trembling. “I suppose I just thought I was _slightly_ different to Olly fucking _Reeder_.”

“ _Helen_ ,” Emma tries helplessly, voice cracking horribly around her name, but Helen’s already thrown her a hateful glare and turned on her heel, marching firmly away down the corridor. Emma hasn’t the time to follow after; just as she steps forward in pursuit, JB rounds the corner with his Eton entourage, and Emma is swept up in a barrage of simultaneous angry commands from four departments, all to be executed posthaste. By the time the throng has moved past her and into the office proper, there’s no longer any sign of Helen’s retreating figure in the corridor beyond.

 

 

 

By some unknown miracle, Fergus does manage to get himself to Euston on time without Adam. It had felt alien, horribly strange, to step into the taxi he knows Adam booked, to collect from the ticket office the tickets he knows Adam bought, and step onto the train and settle into the seat – standard class – he knows Adam would have preferred to have taken.

They’d booked either side of a four-person table, and as of such the empty space in front of him is a yawning, constant reminder of the stomach-churning fact that he’s alone. He has his speech splayed out on the table in front of him, but he’s having trouble focusing on the words. They’d planned so much for this journey: the final edit; the final runthrough; four hours of quiet, muttered scheming, deciding how and when and where to make their move once they step into the bustling, dimly-lit hall of their Lib Dem colleagues this evening. Michael’s speech is due to air at ten o’clock tomorrow morning; tonight will be crucial in deciding his successor, democratic intrigue playing out on a party scale across the various packed hotels of Glasgow.

Adam was supposed to be here to help him, Fergus thinks, miserably. He’s crap at all this without Adam.

They’re pulling out of Lancaster when Fergus gets the call; he’s made no progress on any front, has spent most of his time staring blank-faced out of the window and trying to forget the look on Adam’s face last night just before he’d gone. The buzzing makes him start awake, and the caller ID makes him frown; a familiar but unexpected number.

 _“He’s here,”_ Fergus’ mother says, the minute Fergus answers. _“I’ve got him.”_

Surprise lurches viciously through Fergus’ gut, and it takes him half a heartbeat to weigh up his options. “On my way,” Fergus replies instantly, nearly dropping his phone in his haste to hang up, already trying to gather together his suddenly cumbersome, scattered things.

All roads lead to Rome; and in Fergus’ experience, even the smallest of train stations has a line back to London. Fergus doesn’t even know the name of the station he bolts out onto when the train next stops, bags hanging haphazardly off his shoulders, his heart in his throat. He’s already imagining the look of scowling incredulity Adam will give him the moment he walks through the door, when he’s meant to be four hundred miles north greasing his colleagues and superiors; but for once he could not give a flying fuck about earning Adam’s disapproval. For the first time since he left university, Fergus is filled with a singular, clear goal: to see Adam. Although it’d been something of which he was always vaguely, distantly aware, it’s now perfectly clear to Fergus that he cannot do any of this without him.

Return ticket acquired at an exorbitant amount, Fergus sinks into the cold, metal bench of the unknown station and lets his head fall into his hands. He’s just hoping against fucking hope that Adam needs him back.

 

 

 

It’s well past noon by the time the gravel is grumbling under the weight of Fergus’ taxi and the wide, white façade of his parents’ house is sliding into view between the flanking apple trees. Fergus passes the driver a slightly scrunched bundle of twenty pound notes, thanks him in a half-gibber, and stands and stares at the bright green door as he pulls away behind him, his stomach rolling unpleasantly.  He breathes in; he steps forward; he wusses out, slinks round to the back door with his shoulders hunched, trying to fight the urge to either vomit or run.

As he’d suspected, his mother is sat sunning on the bench by the kitchen door, cigarette in hand. There’s no sign of either his father or Adam. “He’s asleep,” she says as Fergus approaches. “I put him in your room.”

Fergus resists the urge to stare up at the appropriate window, drops down beside her on the bench instead. “When did he get here?”

“About six this morning. On foot, and wet through.”

“Drunk?”

“No.”

Fergus glances at her. “Was he – ?”

“ _No_ ,” his mother interrupts, and her tone suggests this was entirely the wrong question to ask. “Did you fight?” she asks, and Fergus shakes his head. Whatever had happened last night, it hadn’t much felt like an argument. He knows what fighting with Adam feels like. “Then you left him,” his mother continues, drawing hard on her cigarette and throwing him a disapproving look.

The bottom promptly drops out of Fergus’ stomach. “I,” he tries, cycling from sheet-white to beetroot, “we weren’t – ”

“Don’t be stupid,” his mother snaps, stubbing out her cigarette with more force than is entirely necessary and turning to face him, looking furious. “He’s in love with you, you silly boy. I didn’t think you hadn’t _noticed_.”

Something not quite like ice-cold fear slams down Fergus’ spine, coils ruthlessly around his gut; she’s wrong, Fergus thinks, somewhat desperately. She’s mental, she has to be. “Technically,” he says in a small, absent voice, “he walked out on me.” 

Fergus decides not to explain the entire disaster of the night before; although she’s apparently more clued-in to his love life than he is, Fergus thinks he might just combust on the spot if his thin-lipped mother starts talking about orgasms. He then jumps a foot in the air; his mother has rested her hand on his, and her expression is somewhat kinder than before. “He isn’t here because he hates you,” she says. “Go and _talk_ to him,” she adds, the slight stress and the wry smile indicating she’s all too aware of the complete lack of conversation which has become their habit over the past half a decade.

Fergus, swallowing thickly, gets to his feet, throwing both his mother and the aforementioned window a slightly doomed look. She does look a bit like she might slap him if he doesn’t get on with it, so with ever-mounting dread Fergus makes his way through the kitchen, to the stairs, and finally up to the upstairs landing, where he predictably dithers in front of the vast expanse of his own bedroom door. Fergus thinks back to his mother’s voice, to ‘ _he’s in love with you’_ not five minutes before, and the idea sends something cleaving through him, white-hot and frightening but not quite fear itself. Hope, or at least in part; though he doesn’t feel very hopeful when he finally reaches out, grabs the handle, and drags himself through the doorway and into the room beyond.

Adam’s awake when he enters, sat up in bed but with a half-rumpled, bleary look which suggests this to be a relatively recent development. Fergus glances nervously at the window and, finding it closed with relief, wonders whether Adam might have overheard his arrival and their subsequent conversation nonetheless. Fergus sits down on the side of the bed, and instantly wishes he hasn’t. He feels like a beleaguered heroine in an Austen novel. 

“You’re meant to be in Scotland,” Adam says, voice still half-rough from sleep, staring down at his own lap and following his recent trend of fervently avoiding Fergus’ eye.

“Got halfway,” Fergus admits. “Then Mum rang, and – ” He can’t say it. Even fucking now, sat here, after all this. He still can’t fucking say it. He wants, somewhat desperately, to ask if Adam’s alright, even though he’s also vaguely aware that this is the stupidest question he could possibly think of. Less than a day has passed since they saw one another, but Adam looks as if he’s aged a decade, as if he hasn’t slept for half of that. “I was – sat on that train,” Fergus begins slowly, tugging half-heartedly at a loose thread beside him, “and – I couldn’t even think, couldn’t put a fucking sentence together. I’m crap at all this without you, espionage, and – and – fucking politics, you _know_ that – ”

Adam bucks the trend, looks up from his lap and full-out stares at him. “Christ,” he says, “it’s – it hasn’t even occurred to you, has it? To be angry with me.”

In utter confusion, Fergus stares back. “I’m – no, I’m not angry.”

“Fucking hell.” Adam scours his face with his hand, lets out a half-laugh that’s anything but humorous. “I did – a really fucking awful thing to you, last night. I thought you’d be – ”

“I’m _not_ ,” Fergus insists, slightly teary, but Adam won’t look at him again, has become obsessed with a handy strip of wall instead; Fergus feels awfully like he might cry, sick fear rolling hot around his gut. It’s all so fucking alien; everything with Adam has always been so easy, and this, this is anything but. Fergus rubs his eyes, thinks back yet again to ‘ _he’s in love with you’_ falling from his mother’s mouth, but it feels – fucking impossible, really, sat here with Adam, shoulders hunched, eyes anywhere but him. She must have it wrong.

And yet. She was right in one respect; he is here, slumped and miserable in Fergus’ old bed. And alright, you could make the case that there isn’t anywhere else for him to go – but there is, really, Angela or Geoffrey or even a Travelodge off the sodding M40 if he’d been really desperate, a week of binge-eating takeaways ordered to the room as he tried to drag his life back on track without him. But Adam had picked here instead; Fergus’ bed, Fergus’ family, Fergus’ home. A fleeting, giddy shock of hope sears through him again. That has to be worth something, he thinks; it has to be.

Adam sighs, runs a hand through his hair, and the touch of finality to it has Fergus’ stomach lurching. Flashbacks to the kitchen, to how he’d felt when Adam had walked out the door, weak and somehow – empty. He’ll ask me to leave, Fergus thinks, hysterical, he’ll ask me to leave, and I will, I know I will – I’ll just fucking go –

“Fergus – ”

“I love you,” Fergus blurts, miserably. “Whatever it is I’ve done, I’m _sorry_ , alright, I know I’m a fucking – ” He gestures expansively, helplessly. “ – nightmare, arsehole, all of it. We don’t have to – anything, I don’t – I don’t – ” It occurs to Fergus he’s not managing much aside from gibberish; he’s feeling horribly like he might be sick again. “Please don’t ask me to go,” he finishes, voice strangled, thick and desperate. “I will, if you want me to. But please don’t.”

For a long, awful while Adam does nothing but stare at him, and Fergus becomes increasingly convinced that throwing himself out of the window is the only escape from this total, abject, nausea-inducing humiliation; that Adam will file a harassment suit with a very expensive lawyer, and won’t even glance back to place his resignation letter on Fergus’ desk. Then Adam smiles, bright and warm and crinkle-eyed and wrenchingly familiar, and that vague, terrifying sense of hope slams back through Fergus in full again.

“Christ, I’ve been a prick,” Adam says quietly after a heartbeat, throwing Fergus a rueful, half-apologetic look and scrubbing idly at the hair at the nape of his neck.

Fergus chokes out a half-laugh. “Yeah,” he replies, shakily, “yeah, just a bit – ”

“Hang on a fucking minute, you’ve not been much better,” Adam interrupts, eyebrow raised, but he’s soppily, unforgivably holding Fergus’ hand, and he’s still fucking grinning, ear to ear. He means vaguely to tell Adam to piss right off; but then Adam’s kissing him, his hand warm against Fergus’ throat, and it understandably slides roughly to the bottom of Fergus’ imminent agenda.

Later, when Adam insists they descend downstairs to help Fergus’ mother with the dinner, she throws him such a triumphant, told-you-so look as they enter the room that Fergus, red-eared with embarrassment, almost wants to hit her. Fergus’ father, on the other hand, is shuffling round the kitchen with the distinct air of a man who’s trying desperately to pretend he’s heard nothing of the noises coming from Fergus’ bedroom this afternoon; Fergus takes refuge with him, chopping vegetables in embarrassed silence and trying very hard to drown out the underhand but cheerful mutterings of Adam and his mother with the abrupt noise of his knife on the board. Occasionally, his mother breaks out into peals of laughter, and Fergus wishes hopelessly for the floor to swallow him whole.

They eat largely in companionable silence; then Fergus’ mother picks a film, some period nonsense Fergus cheerfully ignores in favour of Adam, pressed up against him and making random, half-aborted movements with his thumb on the back of Fergus’ hand. Four hundred miles away, Fergus is fully aware that he’s thrown the party into full-out war, a nest of intrigue and drama and scurried, frantic diplomacy between Glasgow hotel rooms; but Fergus is physically incapable of caring less. As ever when he’s in High Wycombe, Westminster feels a thousand worlds away; but even more so now, faced with the vague, terrifying thought that he nearly lost all this in a clusterfuck of nonsense. Adam, snoring slightly as he falls asleep against his shoulder, nearly thrown under the bus in a haze of political fucking rubbish that may very well ultimately lose Fergus his job, end his brief, ill-fated Westminster career for good – but fuck it, he thinks, viciously. As if it would even matter, as if he would even last five minutes without Adam.

The guest room stays untouched; Adam follows him unquestioningly to his bedroom, and it’s still really fucking strange to watch him change into Fergus’ borrowed pyjamas, sprawl out under his butter-soft, worn duvet. But he’s no longer afraid to push his head against the crux of Adam’s shoulderblades, to fall asleep half-tangled, to wake up saying Adam’s name.

 

 

 

The Deputy Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland resigns both his position and his party leadership at half-past nine on Friday morning, just as his lengthy, overemotional, but ultimately mundane Conference speech draws to a close. It coincides with breakfast in the Williams household, Fergus and his father picking gloomily at grapefruits foisted on them by Fergus’ mother whilst Adam is treated to a pile of toast and an exorbitant amount of bacon. Diane herself throws the television a shrewd look, mutters something which sounds distinctly like _good riddance_ in Michael’s general direction.

Adam finds Fergus nervously hovering in the middle of the living room once the breakfast is cleared, stood in front of Michael’s pixelated, apologetic face informing the nation that his decision had been made with the best interests of the party and the country in mind, conveniently skipping over the emotional blackmail and dodgy insider training which would form both a more interesting, sensational, and above all truthful version of events. Adam stands behind him, rests his chin on Fergus’ shoulder and snakes his hands round his waist, and Fergus finds it infinitely more undemanding to relax back into him than train his eyes on the offensively red and white tickertape.

“Rutland’s a good choice,” Adam comments idly, half-swallowing a yawn.

Fergus nods, hums in agreement. “Helen will be pleased,” Fergus says drily, and he can feel rather than see Adam’s smile in reply.

Adam drops a kiss on his shoulder, untangles his arms from Fergus’ waist. “We’re taking Harry for a walk,” he says, and sends him a look licked with vicious glee. “Your mum agrees you need the exercise.”

Balefully overdressed for a hot summer morning, Fergus and Adam struggle up the reasonably sloping hill up to the nearby farmer’s field they have beleaguered permission to let Harry rheumatically charge about in. Fergus is chiefly spiting him for the exercise; but up until they’d hit the slope below Adam had taken his arm, and the idea of it is still making him a little dizzy. 

“I do wish I could’ve seen his face,” Adam admits, cheerfully shredding a handful of nondescript flora as they lean against the fence, waiting for Harry to tire himself out. “After half a decade of passive-aggressive shit-slinging.”

Fergus flashes him a quick grin. “I suppose I’ll have to start thinking about phrasing, won’t I. An emotional, heartfelt tribute. How he’s bettered both the party and the country – ”

“Perhaps a touch less sarcastic on the night,” Adam says through a yawn, scouring his face with his hand. “Your phone’s quieter than I thought it’d be, actually.”

Fergus flushes guiltily. “I don’t have it,” he admits. “I, um. Threw it out of the window.” A pause. “On the M40.” Adam slides him a tart, disbelieving look; “it wouldn’t stop ringing,” Fergus adds balefully, by way of rather poor explanation.

Fergus has already pulled out of his Conference speech with a vague, unverifiable claim of poor health; a quick phonecall on Adam’s behalf had solemnly intensified Fergus’ symptoms and thus won them the week to themselves, supposedly recuperating from a vicious bout of stomach flu in the peace and quiet of the countryside. In four and a half years, Fergus cannot recall them ever spending this much time away from the gloomy, ever-present backdrop of Westminster; even their brief and ultimately disastrous excursion to the south of France two summers previously had been beleaguered and then cut short by a series of increasingly awful DoSAC email catastrophes, eventually culminating in Fergus both having to return early from holiday and take a paycut for something not even remotely his fault.

Eventually, Harry grows bored of the rabbit hole he’s cathartically excavated, and the three of them saunter back towards the house at a lethargic pace. They find it empty on arrival, and Fergus takes the opportunity to fuck Adam very slowly and very loudly in his bedroom at an entirely inappropriate hour of the morning; he then launches into doing the entire household’s laundry afterwards as pseudo-guilty penance, and by the time his mother returns from the supermarket he’s hanging pristine bedsheets out to dry in the back garden, Adam lounging in a deckchair and occasionally glancing up from his twitter feed to make snarky remarks. Fergus is smugly dwelling on the less than manly noise he’d wrenched out of Adam some hours previously, which is, in his mind, at least marginally less childish than flipping him off.

Fergus’ mother arrives with two mugs of steaming, perfectly-brewed tea, and Fergus watches in silence as Adam’s face lights up, accepting his with a wide smile and an exchange of frankly boorish insults as to Fergus’ proficiency at sorting out the laundry. The latter is worth the grin it leaves on Adam’s face as she retreats again to fetch a second deckchair, no doubt to readily join his sneering audience. All things considered, the current outcome is probably the best that could have been expected – perhaps barring some strange, alternate universe in which Fergus had accidentally also stumbled his way to PM, found a cure for cancer, and/or resurrected Adam’s parents from beyond the grave in the process. But it’s slowly dawning on Fergus that although the two of them are here, happy, together, Adam’s conscience is by no means intending to let the past month cheerfully slide.

“What was it like?” Adam had asked, wind-rumpled and solemn, his eyes fixed on the distant, lunatic figure of Harry in the field beyond. “When I left,” he clarified, his hands stuffed in his pockets, shoulders hunched, childlike.

For a heartbeat, Fergus was instantly back in London, curled around cold porcelain and his icy bathroom floor, body wracked with nausea and frantically swallowing back tears. “Not good,” he said quietly, euphemistically, in lieu of making a slightly hysterical proclamation on how Adam had quite neatly ripped his world from under him. Adam had nodded, still unable to meet his eye, and Fergus’ first thought had been that this might be some sort of awful test; a way for Adam to check, after everything, what precisely it had meant to him, if anything. But he thinks he knows Adam better, and recognises almost instantly his attempt at masochistic, self-flagellating atonement, coming from the same, dogged guilt which runs through the quiet looks he throws him, the occasional, fleeting touch.

Just time, Fergus thinks, and then with his own, private smile, possibly also several dozen more orgasms. Normal service will resume; with the snitty comments and the ruthless alliance with his mother, they’re halfway there already.

 

 

 

Two days later, their week’s retreat is rather rudely and indisputably ended when Eastbourne pier catches fire. They’re slumped on Fergus’ bed when they hear the news, clothed and lying on the covers, watching the rain through the window and trying to work up the urge to take Harry for his daily walk in one of many promised torrential downpours; then Adam gets a call, and Fergus knows from his expression three minutes in that their brief respite has definitely come to a close. They’ve been lucky to have this long, and it is at least a reasonably legitimate reason to drag them away, given that Fergus had been half-convinced Peter would accidentally grope a foreign dignitary and he would have to rush back to London posthaste to somehow take the blame.

Fergus’ mother presents them with cold beef sandwiches and the keys to the Clio at the back of the garage, which is Fergus’ car in name only. His father manages a gruff handshake with Adam and a look of shared embarrassment with his son, the both of them slightly pink at the ears and avoiding one another’s eye as they say goodbye. Fergus’ mother, by contrast, pulls Adam aside for a good fifteen minutes, and even though they’re both vaguely red-eyed at the end neither will say a word to him of what they discussed; Fergus only receives a curt, warm hug, and a brief but believable warning that if he ever does anything like that to Adam again, Diane will disown him. Then they’re in the car; buckling seatbelts; revving the engine; and sliding backwards out of the drive, Fergus’ parents standing in the doorway, Harry at their side as they wave them goodbye.

It’s a two hour drive from High Wycombe to Eastbourne, and it is for the most part uneventful. Fergus learns with mild surprise that Adam once lived in Swindon; they share their mutual hatred of all-day-breakfast sandwiches over their pre-packed lunch in a small and miserable café at a service station off the M25; and they discover somewhere near Horley that they both know all the words to ‘Tainted Love’, though neither can sing it in tune. With only one minor fuel-related crisis (in which they both briefly forget about the existence of smartphones and pull over to accost a terrified nearby member of the public as to the nearest garage), they arrive at Eastbourne at around two and largely without incident.

Given that Fergus requires Adam to aid him in London, the Sussex side of their operations is run by a kind-faced ex-journalism contact of Adam’s named Chanise, whose thick Black Country accent is often somewhat incongruous in the prim company of the local élite. She greets them both with a wide smile and an enormous stack of paperwork, the latter of which Fergus neatly deposits with his second-in-command (earning himself a truly filthy look) and ignores for a brief sitrep of the pier disaster instead. Once Adam emerges from the pile with an expression which undoubtedly means trouble later, they decide briefly on a media strategy (local press at nine; national papers at eleven; BBC at two) and a fitting obituary for the attraction Fergus now guiltily admits he never actually visited. Needless to say, Fergus does not therefore get much input in the phrasing.

They emerge from Operations HQ at around seven, and by then Fergus’ stomach is growling miserably; they thus decide to kill two birds with one stone, and stroll along the front to their preferred local and a large, artery-clogging, diet-defying plate of steak and chips. The mood in the _Herring_ is decidedly sombre. A few of the locals wave cheerily as Fergus ducks through the door, but even his quiet and affected brand of buffoonery falls flat, and after they’ve eaten Fergus and Adam meander through the crowd with identical, solemn expressions, keeping the patrons’ glasses well-filled as they listen to each with a patient and sympathetic ear.

After their first, rambling lap the atmosphere brightens somewhat, and Fergus steers his constituents away from The Greatest Disaster in Half a Century to happier matters; their grandchildren’s exam results, what a nice job that lovely chap Djokovic did at Wimbledon, whether Fergus will be staying long enough to come to the céilidh on Tuesday. As much as the image of Fergus flopping and palpating around the Town Hall clearly and instantly brings great joy to Adam, Fergus politely and firmly declines the invitation.

Despite the fact it’s a Monday night in the middle of July, the pub is reasonably crowded, and Adam and Fergus are thus jostled together in the midst of a large crowd of constituents, sat with an optimistically large group of people around a well-worn and slightly-sticky mahogany table that’s certainly seen better days. As of such, when Adam, ostensibly fully absorbed in an animated conversation with the local tweed-maker, slides a hand down Fergus’ back and rakes his nails firmly but unmistakably at the base of Fergus’ spine, their company remains entirely ignorant – except for the strangled noise Fergus inelegantly chokes on mid-sentence, and given that Fergus’ eloquence is both well-known and the source of not a little local amusement, this is readily ignored.

The tweed-maker departs, and the clay pipe enthusiast takes his place; but Adam’s hand doesn’t move, and Fergus is finding it increasingly complicated to breathe without moaning. Some ten excruciating minutes later, Adam’s company departs, and he leans in quite innocently to suggest they head home for the night, given Fergus’ busy schedule for the following morning. Fergus, by now reasonably drunk and half-hard in too-tight trousers, would quite like to kill him.

The flat is clean, and quiet, and unchanged. They could certainly afford something better now; but instead they’ve chosen to change what they already had, the rickety sofabed swapped out for something plush in leather, a larger and mostly unused television, a larger and frequently used bed. Given how little time they both spend there, it feels curiously like home. They cannot afford to live together in London; Fergus’ position is precarious enough, and though Fergus himself could name twelve MPs who have a similar and overlooked relationship with their aides-cum-partners, Fergus daren’t give Michael the ammunition.

But Michael’s sacked, Fergus thinks, as he brainlessly fumbles to unlock the door. And Louise Rutland once smiled at him at a dinner party. Not for the first time that week, Fergus finds himself feeling more than a little giddy at the thought of what might come next.

He’s smiling as Adam follows him into the flat, and it’s still cleaving his face when Adam kicks the door shut behind him, hustles Fergus up against the nearest wall and rather unceremoniously slides a hand down to his arse. He feels dizzy, heady, as if he’s missed Adam horribly, but they’ve not been apart for more than five minutes in days – were alone in the car just hours before –

With a total lack of ceremony, Adam slides Fergus’ trousers down his thighs and takes him in hand, mouthing along the line of his shoulder in a manner belying a fervent want to bite, if Fergus weren’t being paraded in front of the nation’s media the following morning. “Adam,” Fergus mutters between gasps, “bedroom – ”, and with marked reluctance, Adam pulls back, withdraws his hands, kisses him hotly instead, until Fergus works up the necessary brains to drag them in the vague direction of the bedroom, though he barely remembers to pull up his trousers before attempting to walk there.

Adam’s on top of him the moment they’re through the door, straddled across his waist on the bed and failing entirely in his attempt to both kiss him and tear his shirt off, the latter mostly impeded by Fergus’ prissy insistence that he undoes all the buttons (a good M&S shirt, and a birthday present to boot). The shirt, eventually, is gone; followed closely by Adam’s, their trousers, and, with only a slight loss of dignity, their underwear. Then Adam has him pinned against the mattress, rocking his hips, half-hard and already sweat-soaked, clawing slightly at Adam’s back and breathing wetly against Adam’s neck.

This drunk and this desperate, Adam could ask him to bend over Her Majesty herself and he’d probably do it; but even so, when Adam pulls back, panting slightly, and asks if he can fuck him in a quiet, stricken voice, bright, pure terror soars briefly through Fergus’ gut. This is by no means any fault of Adam’s, but rather a fear of Fergus’, born cruelly and effectively from several uncompromising years of public education and a rather large disaster with a previous – in fact only other – partner at university, arguably the first of numerous political catastrophes suffered by Fergus’ name. But this is Adam, Fergus thinks. Balanced naked across his waist and biting his lip, sweat cooling at his temples and breath rough in his throat, asking for permission Fergus desperately wants to give.

Feeling dizzy and somewhat reckless, Fergus nods his head, and the look that rips through Adam’s face is unforgettable. Adam kisses him, sloppy and hot; then he slides down his chest, settles between his legs, and starts to suck him off. There’s a moment where Fergus thinks he’s decided against it – then there’s a familiar touch of cold, sticky fingers at his thigh, and Fergus throws back his head, closes his eyes, and tries very fucking hard not to think, to concentrate instead on the rise and fall of Adam’s head between his legs.

Adam is incredibly, gutwrenchingly gentle; so much so that, five minutes later, Fergus finds himself tugging loosely at Adam’s hair and begging him faster in a rough, fucked voice, shaking and frustrated and unable to both grind down and push up with his hips at once. At this, Adam raises his head; Fergus had anticipated smug, but finds him flushed and raw, breathing ragged and eyes blown, heady and desperate. They stare at one another, Adam’s fingers still moving so fucking _slowly_ , and Fergus whines, a hot, high sound, hand scrabbling loosely at the sheets. He doesn’t think anyone’s looked at him like this in his entire life, so purposeful and so wanting.

There’s a brief and frantic battle with the pillows; then Adam has him on his back, propped up from the waist down and legs spread wide, and Fergus is desperately trying not to panic or cry, vaguely aware that both would throw them firmly – and perhaps permanently – back to square one. Adam’s hand squeezes briefly at his thigh. “Fergus,” he says, a familiar, grounding sound, half-fond, half-exasperated, still smiling in a way that makes Fergus’ chest ache. “It’s alright. It’s me.”

With this, the world briefly becomes incredibly simple. “Please,” Fergus says thickly; and Adam leans down, kisses him, and pushes inside.

For a long, cruel while, Fergus cannot move or breathe. Eventually, his focus begins to broaden from the pressure at the base of his spine; he notices the sweat falling from Adam’s chest onto his, the soft, high shake of Adam’s breath, the almost imperceptible shudders running through Adam’s limbs, his muscles pulled taut, locked against the desperate urge to fuck him. Fergus opens his eyes, quite unaware that he’d shut them; Adam’s are open, too, but glazed, focused on a spot just beside Fergus’ neck, teeth buried viciously hard in his bottom lip. Fergus shifts his hips a touch, and Adam moans, low and brutal, fingers spasming against Fergus’ skin.

Adam drags his eyes to find Fergus’, and when he does, Adam looks so fucked, so far-gone. Fergus wonders briefly whether Adam needs him to beg, and then Adam moves, a slow slide back and forward, shaky and uncertain but growing surer, and Fergus’ world contracts quickly down to rhythm, the murmur of Adam’s heartbeat, the push-pull of their hips, the hotness of Adam’s skin. At this angle, his fingers can’t quite reach Adam; he grasps tightly at the headboard, his back an arcing bow but his head falling forward, determined not to miss one single moment of Adam, the slackness of his jaw, the slope of his neck, the glazed, desperate look of his expression. Adam catches him staring, lets loose a shaky, half-gasping grin, and it’s the sight of Adam happy, slack-mouthed and bright-eyed and smiling as he fucks him, as much as the hand Adam somehow manages to wrap around his cock that makes him come half a heartbeat later, head back, sharp and tearing through him, stars behind his eyes and shaking down his spine.

By the time of his next rational thought he’s pressed flat against the mattress, pillows kicked away and Adam lying next to him, one hand tracing half-aborted circles against Fergus’ skin and using the other on himself. Fergus tugs loosely at his arm, pulls him over until Adam’s on top of him again, and replaces Adam’s hand with his own. He uses the other to wind fingers in Adam’s hair and kiss him, sloppy and hot; Adam comes in his hand a few moments later, letting loose a loud shout against Fergus’ mouth, a half-babbled attempt at Fergus’ name.

Fergus is dimly, distantly aware of the filth around them, the wet patches on the bed, the unpleasant stickiness between his thighs and on his chest. In five, maybe ten minutes’ time they’ll be enough to drive him mental, to force him from the bed in search of hot water and fresh sheets; but for now, Adam’s a hot weight across his chest, his breath is a warm tattoo against his skin, and for the first time in innumerable decades Fergus feels complete.

 

 

 

Given the fact it’s only Tuesday, Emma’s week has already been singularly long and depressing. The appointment of Louise Rutland has been met with general favour within her own party, but it’s generally well-known that she has no fondness for Tories, and thus trying to do anything with her in the context of the coalition government they are still very much stuck in has become a complete and utter nightmare; she almost set the Minister for Transport’s tie on fire during yesterday’s briefing. Governments have been known to rise and fall before Emma cries in Westminster, but she did have to shut herself in the ladies with a wadge of toilet paper balled up in one hand after JB’s long, rambling bollocking in the aftermath of said tie incident that made it perfectly clear he considers their new coalition partner entirely and unfairly her fault.

Tuesday morning has, by contrast, progressed largely without incident, but Emma suspects this is probably to do with Rutland’s absence from HQ as any newfound sense of political harmony. She’s taking a yellow highlighter miserably to the week’s schedule to quantify the number of potentially disastrous congregations in the near future when Theo walks in, looking bedraggled but definitely in better spirits than she is, clutching his ubiquitous clipboard and grinning slightly.

“You’ve got a visitor,” Theo says, and given the week she’s having, Emma’s stomach sinks immediately; it’s only when he steps aside to reveal Helen, on edge and scowling slightly and obviously feeling out of place, that Emma begins to think she may not have inexorably pissed the entire universe off. Theo has the audacity to wink at them as he backs out the room, closing the door behind him, and Emma wastes a minute throwing him a pointed glare instead of staring at Helen.

Helen clears her throat, shifts a little on her feet; Emma takes her nervousness for the faint glimmerings of a good sign. If the plastic bag she’s toying with holds the motley collection of things that have aggregated at Helen’s flat over the past few weeks, then surely she’d have dropped it, slapped her, and run. “It’s good to see you,” Emma says, because it has the double advantage of being both neutral and truthful.

Helen contemplates her in silence for a while; then sighs, shakes her head, and drops the bag on Emma’s desk. “A peace offering,” she explains, running a hand distractedly through her hair. “I thought – we could have lunch.”

Emma’s heart jumps from where it lies knotted in her chest, and she instantly lets loose a shaky smile, along with a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. “Please,” she says with feeling, gesturing at the spare chair beside her desk, unable to tear her eyes away as Helen sinks into it and begins distributing sushi boxes and napkins. She hadn’t for a minute thought she’d even earn Helen’s understanding, let alone anything else; but here, now, with Helen offering her plastic cutlery and chopsticks and occasional, furtive glances, it appears that by some miracle she may even have been granted Helen’s forgiveness. Their legs are brushing under the enormous wooden barricade of Emma’s desk, and Helen’s wearing the smallest of smiles, listening warmly to Emma’s babbled woes of life under the reborn coalition without even the smallest apparent resentment.

Helen stands with obvious reluctance once the food is finished and cleared away, and Emma, fussing with plastic boxes and the overfilled bin, finds this dizzyingly hopeful; she’s half-afraid the peace offering might also equate to farewell, that this is all just Helen’s way of neatly tying up loose ends. If this is indeed the case, the very idea of letting Helen leave again is almost unbearable, but especially if she still thinks as ill of Emma as she obviously did the last time they met. “Helen,” Emma braves, voice already shaky and her hands even worse, “I – Listen. At the party. That wasn’t why I – ” She flushes, ducks her head. “I, I don’t want you to think I – ”

“I know,” Helen says quietly, her head tilted, quite calm. “It wasn’t your intention. Initially.”

“It wasn’t really at the end, either,” Emma continues unsteadily, staring at her wringing hands and smiling somewhat humourlessly. “There wasn’t some – big Machiavellian moment. It just sort of happened. I know, I know, that sounds like bollocks – ”

“Just a little,” Helen interrupts, but she does at least sound amused, and when Emma risks a miserable glance she’s smiling slightly. “I didn’t come here to bite your head off.”

“Yes, but. I hadn’t apologised. Haven’t apologised,” she realises, “and – I’m sorry.”

There follows a brief and awful pause, and Emma is briefly convinced drowning herself in the Thames is the only possible future. “Alright,” Helen eventually says, and Emma’s heart skyrockets. “Forgiven.”

As much as this makes Emma’s head spin, it doesn’t however curtail the idea of Helen’s unexpected lunchtime arrival being nothing more than a courteous way of saying goodbye. “There’s the, um, Defence thing with the Bolivians this weekend,” Emma probes casually, trying and definitely failing to keep her tone light. “Were you – thinking of – ?”

“No,” Helen interrupts, slinging her bag onto her shoulder and pulling her hair from under the strap. She sends Emma an amused look at her obvious disappointment, and adds, “I had imagined there might be better ways of us spending Saturday night.”

Emma flushes. “Right,” she agrees, fighting back a smile and handing Helen her coat. “Perfect.”

Helen kisses her on the cheek as she goes, a sharp waft of heady perfume and soft skin, and although it’s not quite the fierce desk-bending Emma had fantasised, it’s certainly better than the slap to the face she’d anticipated in its stead. Theo slides her a very knowing look as he knocks to announce the arrival of their one-thirty, but Emma can’t even find the strength to scowl, settles for bright, cheery smugness in its place, her face still hot and her heart warmer in her chest. That she has to spend forty-five minutes trying to stop Rutland boiling the press secretary’s head had earlier felt catastrophic and impossible; but now it feels like child’s play. Three days until the weekend, she thinks; just three days. Then her, and Helen, and an endless, lazy Saturday afternoon – something which, an hour or so before, she never thought she’d have again.

 

 

 

“Don’t make a dick of yourself,” Adam says, a familiar litany whenever imminently faced with the dreaded pairing of Fergus and rolling news. They’re stood fifteen feet away from the still-smoking site of Eastbourne’s pier on a grey, miserable day, the wind ruffling Fergus’ hair past any possible hope of Adam’s to tame it and the sky threatening thunderously above them. So long as it falls short of actually tipping it down, Fergus is mildly hoping it’ll give him some gravitas. Adam finishes fussing with his tie, distractedly smooths down the lapels of Fergus’ coat, and looks rather like he wants to kiss him. Fergus tries and fails not to grin. “Prick,” Adam mutters, flushing slightly and fervently avoiding his eye.

A small, nervous, brown-eyed girl taps Fergus on his shoulder, grasping a walkie-talkie in one hand and a makeup brush in the other. “We’re ready for you,” she says, and with a final, smug look at Adam, Fergus wanders off in the direction of his waiting audience.

Despite Adam’s ubiquitous nerves, the interview goes predictably well. Fergus has, as ever, learnt his lines impeccably, and Adam and Chanise have been rather good in drafting them; sombre but not overdramatic, nostalgic but not tacky, and thankfully the collective wit of the BBC news team hasn’t solidified long enough to scour the archives and discover that Fergus had never actually visited the thing. There is, of course, a brief spate of questioning as to his absence from the conference, which (in his opinion) Fergus handles with considerable aplomb, though he’s certain Adam won’t agree with him; then the conversation predictably turns to the party coup, and Adam, hanging nervously to one side, looks rather more like he’s about to shit himself.

“I haven’t worked very closely with Michael Langdale during my time as MP for Eastbourne,” Fergus says soberly to camera after the requisite question, frowning in a way he feels makes him look vaguely constipated but which Adam insists gives his tone some much-needed solemnity. “But I admired him from afar as leader of the party, especially with regards to the difficult and often controversial decisions he made in the interests of the country at large and the future of British politics. Louise Rutland is an excellent choice, and I look forward to her leading us to success at the next election.”

That he manages to deliver this all with a straight face is a testament both to Adam’s training and Fergus’ acting. He easily navigates a follow-up question from a thin-eyed journalist placing him at the centre of a wide web of intrigue and conspiracy concerning Michael’s resignation, which (despite being entirely accurate) is thankfully quite at odds with Fergus’ perceived character, and thus easily dismissed with a wry smile and a half-joke about the demands of his DoSAC duties; then they’re back to Eastbourne, the upcoming election, the repair work on the pier, and finally Fergus’ favourite local place for lunch, at which point Fergus knows the worst of it is done.

He makes sure to be firmly liberated of his microphone before speaking to Adam again, and they wander a little way down the front to be certain of their privacy, watching the dishwater-grey waves sucking feebly at the ground beneath the rail and standing rather closer than is strictly necessary for conversation.

“Part of me can’t believe we’re still doing this,” Adam says idly, staring down at the water below and scuffing the ground with his feet.

“Oh, cheers,” Fergus says dryly, throwing him a half-hearted glare. “Nice to know you expected me to last.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “Not like _that_. Just. Five years,” he adds, heavily and with not a little wonder, and Fergus does have to concede the point. The first time they’d stood here, half a decade ago, they hadn’t thought Fergus stood a chance of winning at all; but here they are, five years on, Fergus miraculously somehow still in office and Adam still standing beside him, inexorable and familiar, scowling at the horizon and stifling a yawn. Fergus is painfully aware that if it weren’t for the latter, he wouldn’t have the former at all.

In true British seaside style, it begins to rain, a thin drizzle which threatens to thicken, and further down the front the news teams disperse, their solemn but quip-filled links and vox pops acquired to their superiors’ satisfaction. They’re both standing with their wrists resting on the cold metal rail; Adam slides a calculating look in the direction of the departing journalists, takes Fergus’ right hand in his left, hidden to all others by their huddled poses and identical thick black coats. “Soft git,” Fergus murmurs, and Adam shoots him a smile, wicked and carefree.

The rain has predictably worsened; they’re getting predictably soaked, but Fergus can still feel Adam warm beside him, and all that’s waiting for them elsewhere is probably another five years’ worth of paperwork. Seventy-odd miles away, Louise Rutland is raining hellfire onto Downing Street in a capacity that could so easily have been Fergus’; but even though the idea of it does evoke some base instinct, a mixture of greed and terror, the knowledge of what it almost cost him cuts far more sharply. This is hardly going to be the last leadership election of Fergus’ lifetime; and besides, as much as Fergus had slid from his corporate hellhole into government out of some direct interest in enacting political change – a sensible man wanting power, after all, would never have joined the Liberal Democrats – he thinks he’d give it up now in half a heartbeat if Adam asked it of him.

For now, Fergus happily stands flanked by the smoking hulk of Eastbourne’s ex-pier and Adam, squinting out at the rain-drenched sea and shoulders hunched against the wind. Fuck Michael, and Louise, and Olly, and Dan _fucking_ Miller, and every other Westminster tosspot whose life revolves around sucking off the right Cabinet minister at the FCO’s monthly do. There’s so much more to life; and, to his mild surprise, Fergus thinks he might have found it, in Eastbourne and in Adam.


End file.
